Faculty

Contact Information

Karol Bomsztyk, MD

Professor of Medicine and Adjunct Professor of Pharmacology
University of Washington

Detrimental epigenetic processes are emerging as major pathophysiologic culprits of disease including inflammation, infection and organ injury. These processes involve signaling, transcription and epigenetic factors that regulate gene transcription in the chromatin environment, or the epigenome. To better define epigenetic processes in health and disease, our laboratory has been developing high throughput and sensitivity epigenetic platforms and computational tools and have applied them to study acute organ injury, including sepsis. Using these methods and computational tools we have also began series of studies to better understand epigenetic bases of HIV latency.

Current research projects available to trainees include epigenetic studies of inflammation as well as multiple organ injury in experimental sepsis, epigenetic bases of HIV latency, development of high throughput and sensitivity epigenetic methods, development of urine and blood epigenetic biomarkers, development of computational tools to acquire, analyze and visualize epigenetic data.

Research funding: NIH, Life Sciences Discovery Fund (LSDF) of Washington and The Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR).

Dr. Bomsztyk research area interests:

Development of high throughput sample preparation and epigenetics analytical platforms.